[GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues

[Nicolas Pettiaux]

Dear Mr Harnad,

It has taken me some days, even though I had been gently warned, to 
digest your mail and to compose a response.

Without any doubt, you have been an important and long time actor of and 
around open access. I am indeed a newcomer to this list, but not 
completely a newcomer to the subject.

I admit that I know much better free software (and have learned and 
don't like the very confusing words "open source software" that I never 
use ... partly becaue I can always say that in case of doubt, my 
language is French that express better my views with "logiciel libre"), 
that I have known and worked with for more than 20 years.

I am basically a teacher. I have been for the last 30 years. I have 
taught (mainly) physics and computing science to people from 7 till 77 
(the ones reading Tintin ;-). For me, the process of learning as much as 
the one of teaching, is difficult. It requires a lot of energy, time and 
patience, on both sides. And there is no good way, equally good for 
everyone. For every teacher and learner. Every situation is new, 
different, with its own difficulties.

This GOAL mailing list contains probably a very high concentration of 
people who know OA much better than me, and have done so for much longer 
than I have. And we can read that even for these people, some important 
definitions around OA (eg. green and gold) are NOT the same. 
Interestingly.

I also know that the number of people who have never heard of OA, or 
have such a bad and weak idea of OA, even in the limited world of 
academics, around the Universities and research institutions, is 
probably much larger than the number of specialists and informed people.

I therefore would conclude that the efforts of education around OA is 
large and important.

One of the way I often comes down to when teaching is using the clear 
wording and definitions, the best I can find, using my own and personnal 
judgement. As well as explaining with differents words.

Today, I find that the wording "green OA" and "gold OA" are not 
self-explanatory. In other word, I consider that the words "green" and 
"gold" do not mean anything by themselves and need further explanation. 
If they are not confusing !

For me, this situation is not the best to explain the OA case and need 
for OA. And it will probably lead to further mails like mine that will 
upset you. ... And block the discussion, as expressed by some people on 
the list. This is sad in a world where most people still need to be 
educated, in general and surely about OA and all its subleties.

I sometimes wonder if I wo not prefer the simple word "free access". 
With free meaning both gratis and libre (freedom), this encompasses what 
Jean-CLaude Guédon says OA is "gratis and free access"

With respect to "contibuting to OA instead of discussing about OA", I 
personnally like to think about "free knowledge" (not only research), 
being both gratis and libre, and I am proud to be the initiator and one 
of the actors of the Digithèque Pierre Gilbert, (see 
http://digitheque.ulb.ac.be/fr/digitheque-pierre-gilbert/ ) a place 
where all works by my grand-father are available online freely. He was a 
poet, an historian (aegyptologist and art historian), academician, 
curator of the Belgian Museum of Art and History ...

I am the initiator and main actor of 2 digithèques to be inaugurated on 
October 17 and 25 in the presence of leading Belgian people, from the 
academic and research world, but NOT ONLY, about
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Roberts-Jones and 
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Sterling whose works will be 
published online under the CC-BY-SA licence.

There are also other ways I consider I contribute to OA and free 
knowledge, or free culture. For example by numerous personnal contacts.

I hope to continue, also on this list, to contribute to a peacefull 
world where more knowledge is available freely to anyone, without any 
barrier, where people are willing to educate one another.

Best regards,

Nicolas Pettiaux

Le 2015-08-14 18:28, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
> Perhaps it’s time for our newcomer, Nicolas Pettiaux, to stop posting 
> for
> a while and do a little reading to inform himself about OA and its 
> (short)
> history. Otherwise he is just making us recapitulate it for him.
> 

-- 
Nicolas Pettiaux, phd  - nicolas at pettiaux.be
Open at work - Une Société libre utilise des outils libres